It seems like I don’t often post pictures from the garden, so here are a few. Here is the garlic with the straw:
I planted nearly 80 different garlics, but not all of them seemed to have survived. I guess I have about 70 left.
In the background you can see the dike that keeps the garden dry. The garden is at about sea level, but the area would regularly flood if it weren’t for the dike. Because of this the ground is almost always at least a little wet, and usually the only time I have to water the garden is right after sowing seeds. For this reason, I have to pull back most of the straw in the spring from the garlic, or it will just stay too wet and rot. You can see some of this straw in the pile in the back.
Here’s a view from the dike:
The garden runs from the green structures, up to and along side the long brick barn. It’s not very clear from the picture, but the garden is surrounded by canals on three side; along the front where the black plastic is, the area in the middle of the picture that looks like dried grass and along the side where the two trees are.
You can see in the background most of the land in the area has been cleared for agriculture, to the left and right of the garden where it is grassy is owned by people who live in the area.
The land where my garden is used to be a very small dairy farm, but is now a vacation home.
I used to be able to use a house here regularly in the summer, but that’s not the case as much this year. This garden is also too far from my home in Amsterdam and I need to spend time on other things this year. I plan to scale down the garden and look for something closer to home, hopefully for next year.
What a beautiful garden! Thanks for posting photos of it.
I’m not sure about my garden this year either but then I am impatient and have to give it more time. Yours looks great! What a nice space for a garden you have.
Patrick,
Great garden and a wonderful site. I tried mulching garlic one year, didn’t remove the straw in spring and …you’ve got it ….most of it rotted off. Now I just carefully weed and it doesn’t get so cold here that the garlic needs a mulch.
It’s a little sad about your changing garden situation. You seem like someone who should have all the time in the world that you want to just grow stuff…
Thanks for the nice comments everyone!
John, one of the reasons for using mulch on the garlic in the winter is to keep the temperature steady, not just protect it from the cold. I don’t remember where anymore, but I was reading a study done by a US university that said garlic mulched in the winter produced bulbs that were about 10% bigger. Flower bulb growers in Holland use peat moss in a similar way for the same reason. If you live in an area with regular winter snow cover, this too has pretty much the same effect.
Obviously you have to put that 10% into perspective. Is it worth the cost and trouble of straw for that 10% extra? If you are a market gardener, it can obviously give you an edge if your garlic is a little bit bigger that your competitor, but as a home gardener can’t you just plant 10% more and be happy with that? Of course the mulch will keep the weeds down, and that is important to consider too, but if you have to pull up the straw in the spring anyway does it really help much?
For me the jury is still out. A lot of wheat is grown in the area around my garden, and straw is cheap and easy to come by. It only takes a few hours to cover or uncover the garden, and I can compost the straw when I’m done. I don’t know if I’ll do it again this year or not.